The position of Secretary to the Austin 7 Clubs’ Association will fall vacant in April 2018 when the current incumbent, Hugh Barnes, stands down under the Constitution Term Limit rules. Nominations for a successor are sought. Under the Term limit rules, the appointment will be for a period of 3 years, with the possibility of renewal for a further 3 year term. After a maximum of 6 years in post, the post holder must stand down. As an aside, this rule is now in force for all of the 9 Officer posts in the Association.

The duties of the Secretary are to offer support to the Association Committee (comprising representatives of the 18 Member Clubs) by organising the quarterly Association meeting with the production of an agenda and producing minutes in a timely manner. A precis of the full minutes is also produced and distributed to Club Magazine Editors for inclusion in their own local magazines.

The Secretary is also responsible for the Association Public Liability Insurance, renewed each February, and acts as the liaison point with Hiscox for matters related to the Association Austin 7 motor Insurance scheme through Richardson Hoskins.

The Secretary is also responsible for communications to all Member, Associate and Overseas Clubs and, as such, maintains an address/contacts file within the Secretarial gmail account. Changes to those details are provided to both the Association Webmaster to maintain the Association website and the Association Magazine designer for the quarterly magazine.

The qualities that one would look for in the new Secretary would be someone with an eye for detail and be keen to see the continued growth of the Association. There will inevitably be considerable involvement in the team planning the 2022 Centenary celebrations. The Secretarial email account is always busy so daily access to that and having some IT skills would be helpful. All Secretarial files are now held in a ‘Dropbox’ account and can be shared with others where necessary and will be handed on to subsequent post holders. Considerable support from the old to the new Secretary is offered.

Informal enquiries are encouraged from anyone with an interest and should be made to Hugh, who can be contacted via secretary@a7ca.org

What we had done well was thought to be the progress we had made in digitising the collection and the efforts of both Hampshire County Council and Leicestershire County Council were noted. It was felt that our efforts had rubbed off on other organisations as we saw an increase in similar projects elsewhere. The main achievement was that the Collection was now better understood by the Austin 7 Community, we were now sharing it and that we were seeing a steady stream of donations and loans as a result.

What we weren’t doing quite so well was the rate which we were getting through the tasks. We had a small team and although we had done well up to now, we had been working on relatively simple parts of the collection. Future areas (eg photos, engineering drawing etc) would need a larger group of people to be involved if we were to get through it in a reasonable time frame. It was agreed we would appeal for more volunteers to join the group, hopefully, people within a 50 mile radius of Lubenham who could attend without too much difficulty.

Oral Histories.

Viewing figure on the Bob Wyatt page shows since launch 238 visits to the page from 161 different people. Large spike to listeners just after launch down to 5-7 a month after. We had two more interviews in post-recording editing – Ian Dunford and Tom ‘the Pom’ Newsome. Others were planned – specifically Ken Cooke had agreed to an interview. (Action NT)

Catalogue

There is still some slight confusion of how the cataloguing system will work between the work that FL does in creating and amending catalogue entries and the creation of the Web site by CC. FL will discuss this with CC and document procedures (Action:FL/CC)

What we still had failed to do was to start recording physical locations of items in the collection. Up to now, items would be easy to find (eg Handbooks) However, with the increasing number of show brochures and such things as photographs and Engineering drawings to come, this information becomes vital. HB will provide a document outlining the procedures to be followed to both create such data and how and where it should be recorded (Action HB/PB)

It is imperative that we start separately recording Accession records, recording details such as donor, terms of donation, Loan items, details of returning loan items etc. A pro-forma has already been provided. (Action PB)

Web site

CC provided the following web site statistics:

Having launched just over a year ago (29th Aug 2016) there have been 28,813 Page views from 3827 users. Spending an average of 4 mins 35 seconds on the site each. 52.08% of visitors are new while 47.9% are returning visitors. Most popular countries in order – UK, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, USA, Germany France…

35.86% of viewers are using a tablet or mobile device.

43.4% of viewers come direct (type in archive.a7ca.org) while 29.1% come from a link from another website, 21.5% from search engines and 6.1% from Social Media (Facebook, twitter etc)

RD provided an initial list of Show Brochures provided by Russell Curtis. CG will check this list against the actual items provided and provide and updated, accurate list to FL for cataloguing. This collection will be added to the existing Show Brochure pages (Action: CG/FL/CC)

CC has prototyped a format for the GdH collection that will display the Album in the form of a book where pages can be turned on screen. The GdH collection will be created as a separate collection. HB has already scanned a selection of Press Cuttings to accompany the Album (though these are fragile and need conservation) Cataloguing is required. CG will supply the wording for an introduction on the web site (Action: HB/CG/FL/CC)

Further developments will include Engineering Drawings, photographs and the Lou Kings family Archive that CG is currently reviewing. To that end, FL took away all the Engineering Drawings for review carrying on her existing project to sort them into A7, A7 related and non-Austin groups before cataloguing. Cross referencing to existing digital images is already part of that process to give ‘quick wins’ for image publishing on the Archive Web site (Action FL)

The large collection of photographs needs to be sorted into the same 3 groups before any other work is undertaken with them. PB will ask DM to help in this task (Action PB/DM)

Lou Kings collection: CG will review contents. The feeling of the group was that although much of the collection was Austin 20 related, we should digitise and publish it all. HB can scan the photos at no cost, so it will be no overhead to the Project. (Action CG/HB)

Next steps

The priorities for the next 12 months where we should see significant progress are as follows:

Photographs to have been sub-sorted and filtered. Priority photos to have been digitised and published. NB – comments to be enabled on photos to allow update by knowledgeable persons (Action first PB/DM then FL/CC)

Engineering drawings to have been sorted and filtered. Where existing images are available, these should be catalogued first and republished on the Archive site (Action FL/CC)

The Archive has no stated Acquisition Policy. It was felt that one should exist. CG and HB will draft one for review (Action CG/HB)

RD will contact an Austin 7 owner he knows as a potential researcher for items that appear on Ebay etc that might be of interest to the Archive (Action RD)

HB demonstrated to PB how one could set up a recurring search on Ebay with email notification for items of interest. PB will look at setting this up. (Action PB)

The Accommodation issue has largely settled down after a summer of uncertainty. However, all were asked to keep the potential for a move at short notice in mind and keep an eye out for likely accommodation if we were to move away from Lubenham.

This highlighted the need to have better ‘physical location’ data held on the catalogue should we need to move.

Publicity

Grey Mag articles are still a requirement. HB will write a quarterly Project update , PB will write an article on an item of interest. Where historic photos are concerned, it should be the norm that a supporting researched article should go with them, rather than just publishing the photos. (Action HB/PB)

A PPT presentation for Clubs is to be drawn up the idea being that Project Team members can use this to give a talk to their local Clubs. HB will do this for the Cambridge Club in November and has offered to do the same for the other Clubs in East Anglia (Action HB/NT)

It was though that a formal ‘Press release’ would be a good idea. HB to contact a potential Author for such a thing (Action HB)

Now accommodation had been settled at Lubenham, it was decided we should have a further Open Day in Spring 2018. No date is yet set.

AOB

FL raised the topic of disposal of inappropriate Archive material (she has found many engineering drawings for example) As a start, PB will invite David Morgan to come and review the Military items we have in the collection with a view to finding a better home for them. (Action PB)

It was suggested that a couple of specific people should be invited to join the project Team. HB will contact them (Action HB)

PB showed the group some recent acquisitions. A Sept 1927, GE Silent Saloon leaflet, Tony Betts had agreed to bid on our behalf at the Edmonds auction, £60. A Sept 1923 Le Mans racers photos lead came via Robin Boyce and we paid €270 for a series of 3 photos of the individual cars and has just agreed to pay another €70 for a start line photo and some press cuttings. HB will scan these and a more comprehensive article will be produced for the Grey Magazine. (Action HB/PB)

The minutes for the April 2017 AGM can be downloaded here.
During this the A7CA Constitution was updated which can be found here.
This meeting was followed by a normal quarterly business meeting, minutes can be found here.

Just a reminder that the Association Archive will be holding its next Open Day on Sunday April 2nd 2017. The Archive, as you may remember, is held at the Headquarters of the Triumph Six Sports Club, Main St., Lubenham, Market Harborough LE16 9TF.

The Archive will be open between 10am and 4pm and there will be displays of the various collections we hold. Members of the Archive Project team will be on hand to help you explore the collections and talk about our progress with the Project so far and our plans for the future.

The last Open Day was very well received and hopefully, those of you who were unable to come last time, will be able to arrange it for this time.

Teas and Coffee will be available and there are a couple of decent pubs in the village that do food for those of you looking for something more substantial..

The A7CA AGM which will take place on Sunday April 9th at the Green Man, Dunchurch, Rugby. Please note the change of venue within the village as, hopefully, the new venue will provide us with better meeting space.

We are slightly formalising things this year in that the AGM will be just that, reports from Officers on the previous year’s achievements and plans for the year ahead, election of Officers, Revision to the Constitution and Awards of Trophies.

Please note, the voting for the adoption of the revised Constitution will be a ‘Members’ vote – ie the 18 Austin 7 Clubs who are ‘full’ members of the Association and that an AGM does not include an agenda item of AOB.

We have nominations for the 2 posts of Chairman and Vice-chairman but still seek a nomination for the post of Advertising Manager.

The finalists in the 2017 National Car Club Awards, in association with Tourism Ireland, have been revealed. This year has seen the most nominations from clubs and club members to date.

Supported by Classic Car Weekly, and endorsed by the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, the overall Award winners will be announced at the awards dinner on Saturday 1st April at Birmingham’s NEC.

Lee Masters, Director of The National Car Club Awards, said: “We had 209 nominations, which is 25 more than the inaugural year and it’s fantastic to see the clubs embrace these awards. Once again, the standard of entries was extremely high with a fantastic mix of clubs of all sizes. “Some of the categories had over 30 entries and reducing these down to a shortlist was extremely difficult, making that place on the shortlist even more valuable and an incredible achievement.”

A total of 16 awards will be presented at the glittering ceremony, hosted by Mike Brewer alongside the Practical Classics Classic Car & Restoration Show. The shortlist covers eight of the award categories with the finalists for the Lifetime Achievement award still to be decided. The other six awards will be decided by the judges on Saturday and presented their prize at the awards dinner. There will then be a ‘Judges Special Recognition Award’ presented to a club that the panel feel has gone the extra mile in the classic motoring movement. Two members from every club shortlisted for an award have been invited to attend as guests of the National Car Club Awards and Tourism Ireland and will be treated to a drinks reception and a complimentary three-course dinner. Further tickets will be on sale for those wishing to attend. For more information, visit www.nationalcarclubawards.com